Homemade Yogurt is Worth the Wait

I remember the first time I talked to a friend about making yogurt.  She brought over some that she had made a few days ago and it was so amazing!  Honestly, I did not like yogurt until I tried hers.  It was sweet instead of sour, with an smooth texture.  This was a few years ago, since I am sure I was either pregnant with Dominic or Charis. 

Soon after this day I went out and bought some yogurt starter and set out to try my own batch.  I had a propane oven that would only go as cold as 170 degrees.  I spent a whole day heating up the oven, waiting for it to be 115 degrees and then putting my culture into the oven in a glass jar.  It felt like forever before there was something the kind of looked like yogurt.  Let me just say, my first batch was not so great.  I tried three more times, but gave up.

Then a month ago a friend and I were talking about making yogurt in a crock-pot.  This is appealing for so many reasons.  One can make more yogurt at once and one doesn't have to devote the oven to a whole day of yogurt making.  I also got a special yogurt thermometer, because I know the first times I failed at making yogurt, temperature was a big part of that. ( http://www.amazon.com/Yogourmet-105-LS-9619-Yogurt-Thermometer/dp/B000N23Q1A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1400882785&sr=8-2&keywords=yogurt+thermometer)

The first time I made my own batch of yogurt I used White Mountain Bulgarian yogurt as my start.  This stuff costs almost seven dollars at our local food coop.  It worked well as a start, but I wanted a texture just slightly less lumpy for my yogurt.  Plus, I wanted a slightly sweeter flavor. 

I went back to the yogurt start I bought a few years ago, I mean I bought a new packet of course.  Yogourmet yogurt start worked really well. 

So how do I use a crock-pot to make yogurt anyway?  I found this great website http://www.culturesforhealth.com/how-to-make-yogurt-in-crock-pot

Then I tried to modify it to work with raw milk.  I only heated the milk to 115 degrees.  This takes one hour in the crock-pot on warm.  Then I added the starter or 1/2 cup of plain live cultured yogurt.  Stir it in well.  Then cover the crock-pot and put at towel over the whole thing.  In about three hours use the yogurt thermometer to check the temperature of the milk.  If it is too cold then put it on warm for about 30 minutes.  Watch it closely.  Turn it off when it is back to 115 degrees.  Then wait. If it is late I night I will just check it when I wake up and warm it up if need be in the morning.

Climates change how long this will take.  It could take somewhere between 6-24 hours to look like yogurt.  There will be some liquid (Whey), but you can save this to ferment oatmeal, bake in bread, or look up other uses.  You don't have to do much.  You can leave the house, but keep checking it when you think about it.  Then when yogurt is done stain it with a cheese cloth.  Then put it in glass jars and cool it.  I have read,  one should put it in the fridge for about 8 hours.  There are cultures that can make you sick if you eat yogurt warm in fermenting process.  Cooling the yogurt in the fridge stops the fermentation process.  Yes, this whole process can take two days.  It is not a quick food to make, but worth it. 

Walnut Tea Cakes

I have been searching for a filling treat that has more nutrients in it than the standard Russian Tea Cakes I used to make with my best friend Carrie in third grade.  This was a Christmas time treat and it was a messy one to make.  We would cover ourselves in powdered sugar, but it was a lot of fun and walnuts taste great in cookies. 

1/3 cup of coconut oil
1/4 cup of raw honey (we got mint honey from the Yakima Valley, it tastes so great!)
1/2 cup of crushed walnuts
1 cup of almond flour
1/4 cup of coconut flour
1 egg
1/4 cup of crushed walnuts for dusting

roll into 2 tbsp balls and then roll in crushed walnuts.  Place on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for around 12 minutes. 

I hope you enjoy these as much as our family does.  :)

My Workout Journey Postpartum

The Truth About Reading

The moments I have wanted and dreaded at the same time have happen for me the last few months.  Tim and I took a leap of faith and decided to pull our kids out of their small Christian school and homeschool.  I thought it was going to tear the world I expected to have apart, but it hasn't.  Keep in mind this is the first time in 5 years I have not been pregnant and breastfeed and being a mom to several children.  I am just breastfeeding right now. 

I mentioned in a previous post that homeschooling was never something I planned for myself.  My husband did a lot of research on homeschooling, but I always thought my kids would do just fine in public school.  Then I had kids.  I knew right away that I did not want my sweet little five year old to be put in a class of seventeen to twenty kids to figure life out.  He was very quiet and we even waited until he was six to consider any kind of school.  When we really had to decide something we picked a small private school and were blessed with some help paying for it.  Joel went to school and opened up a lot socially, but I still questioned if we had picked the right place for him.  It was the best school we could find, but by second grade he really was not learning a whole lot. 

People started to make faces at me when they realized my son could barely read a sentence in five minutes and math was even worse.  We worked on phonetics every summer and simple math to keep him on track, but school seemed to erase all of our work.  I felt depressed, but also sad because I did not want to see my child struggle in school the way that I had.  So there you go, Tim was right. 

We did not make it through second grade.  I have been working on second grade with my son and first grade with my daughter.  My daughter would probably do well in any school in town, she just has that kind of personality, but my son is different.  Not a bad different and certainly not dumb.  The boy can figure out all kinds of things if he wants to.  As mom I can teach at all levels, but it is also important to me to help my son feel like he is not behind.  Plenty of kids don't really start reading until later ages, one just doesn't hear about it.  Maybe one hears, X percent of the population is illiterate.  Why is that the case?  How did this happen?  There are so many factors that go into reading.  If I had one kid I would blame myself so much more if he was like my first son, but I have a daughter who reads everything she can get her hands on.  Our home is filled with books.  I read to my children, so does my spouse, and grandparents.  These kids know that reading is fun and important.

A friend looked at me one day and said, "The nice thing about homeschool is that he doesn't have to read yet.  Most kids pick up reading when they want too."  I remember thinking, but are they being hassled like me about my child not reading?  Have a failed completely?.. and then it hit me.  She is right.  We can read history and science together.  We can focus on grammar and talking about stories.  We can do so much to make books still important, at a level beyond nursery school, and really get to know why reading is worth it. 

When I learned to read I was placed in the dumb group called the sparrows or something like that.  We knew we were dumb because while all the other kids had long chapter books, we had baby books to look at.  Let's face it, maybe I had some trouble reading, but I knew what a real book looked like.  I never really grew into a person who loves to read.  I can say now that I like to read, but I love to write much more.  My husband tells me I must like writing because there was less pressure on me to write.  I can say at younger ages that is probably true. 

So as I sit with my kids and feel like hopefully they are actually learning, I realize they are getting a lot more help than most kids are.  If my son was in school, reading at his level, he might slip through the cracks, but I am not going to let that happen to him.  I am more aware of where he is at and I am able to be alright with that.  As a homeschool mom my friend is right, he doesn't have to read yet.  As
I leave insisting on reading alone I have seen a lot more improvement.  My little boy is now interested in books, he wants to have a chance to read to me, and even if every word is not perfect he can get through a sentence in less time than before. 

I can give him a chance to practice and we will get there.  Everyone tells me that by twelve, homeschool kids usually can read.  I would not say my son cannot read at this point, but we do have more work to do.  In just a few months there has been a lot of progress.  Sometimes we are the obstacles in our children's progress.  Just because a system tell you that one should read by five years old doesn't mean that kids wake up one day reading.  It is our job to nurture a skill, not beat it out of kid.  Don't feel bad if you are in my situation.  I used to feel ashamed like I had missed one to many library story times or something, but just as kids walk at different ages, they also read at different ages too.  I would rather have a son who starts reading at twelve and loves it for life than a kid of reads at five and hates it.